Decorating

Manor space a good fit for single mom

Downtown Edmonton apartment full of character

Jodie McKague's second-floor suite sits at the top of this stately old downtown manor.

Photograph by: Ed Kaiser
, Edmonton Journal

Snuggled amid towers and trees on the downward side of downtown is a stately redbrick manor, with grand veranda and rooftop turret.

The big, old place, nestled below street grade, is only visible from the sidewalk. Heck, I've driven that slope a million times. Didn't see it.

Mind you, it's located midway down the slope, at the point where cyclists reach terminal velocity and walkers going uphill establish a base camp.

Jodie McKague was half-joking when she challenged me to do a feature on her place. Half-joking because her flat in the manor isn't posh or polished.

Yet I was intrigued by her choice. Downtown isn't exactly overrun with single mothers.

Jodie lives in her small apartment with Franka, her lovely five-year-old. Franka is a delight, though I'm told she's not so delightful when walking up that hill toward kindergarten.

Jodie is a freelance writer, completing a degree in communications. After her marriage ended, she started looking for a place of her own.

She wanted to live downtown, but ran into a housing barrier. The apartments were either too expensive or on sketchy streets. Or worse, they were in adults-only buildings.

As I mentioned, Jodie is a writer. A writer is someone who endures endless psychic torment to chisel and craft diamond-bright turns of phrase that she, like all writers, is compensated for with crumbs and coins. It's a tragedy. Someone should really do something for writers.

At any rate, it's not like a single mother living on freelance writing jobs can move into one of 104th Street's Icon towers, though Jodie eyes them with a look that says: Just one bestseller and you're mine.

I climb 20 metres of steep sidewalk, then the stairs to the manor's first-floor veranda. Catch my breath ... and push the doorbell marked for Jodie's suite.

Inside, the manor's entryway is all Gothic-haunted-chic and features a long, steep staircase up to Jodie's second-floor suite.

She estimates her flat is 800 square feet. Methinks her estimate is generous.

The living room and bedroom are ample, but the kitchen is maybe four phone booths; the bathroom, with its no-shower tub, about the same.

Jodie always dreamed of living in Paris. She's now getting a feel for it, what with her Parisian-apartment-sized kitchen and bathroom. Mind you, the kitchen opens up to that second-floor veranda.

The manor was built in 1903 by a wealthy family. The man's sudden death left the woman of the house with five daughters and no income. So she turned it into a boarding house for single women.

"The second I walked in I felt this really beautiful energy," Jodie says, pausing. "I know, that sounds kind of flaky."

She describes it as a feminine energy: Nurturing; welcoming; safe and secure; friendly.